


x. they look so pretty when they bleed

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [10]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Closure, F/M, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Whump, Whumptober, ghost summoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: If Diego ever worked up the courage to tell the story of he and Eudora Patch, this is how he would tell it:They met in the summer. They fell in love in the fall. They broke up in the winter, two years later, and another seven after that, Eudora Patch was killed in the spring.It's a good thing, then, that his brother can summon ghosts.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 18
Kudos: 90





	x. they look so pretty when they bleed

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Blood Loss
> 
> the prompts very vaguely influence my work, but they did remind me of my LOVE eudora patch. diego and eudora are my favourite relationship from the show and i just desperately want more of them. i didn't tag for major character death because it's the same death as in the show.
> 
> enjoy!!

If Diego ever worked up the courage to tell the story of he and Eudora Patch, this is how he would tell it:

They met in the summer. They fell in love in the fall. They broke up in the winter, two years later, and another seven after that, Eudora Patch was killed in the spring.

Maybe, if it was one of his preferred siblings, he might expand on it. Might add that they met on the first day of the Police Academy and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Might add that he asked her out the very next day and she said, _We don’t even know each other, Hargreeves; put the effort in and I might say yes next time._ Might add that he put all the effort he had left in him into getting to know her; the way she took her coffee, the way she wrinkled her nose up when she was tired, or how she painted her toe nails on the bathroom floor with Destiny’s Child playing from the stereo on the bathtub every Sunday night. After two months, he asked her again, and she said, _What took you so long?_

For a while, life was an upwards hill that wasn’t easy to walk, but much nicer when Diego had a partner to hike alongside. He left his past and his nightmares and his family behind him and even got high enough to see the sprawling view. And then he abruptly fell, backwards it seemed; what was once a steadfast fear of authority had turned spiteful and bitter, morphing into disobedience and an inability to do what he was told.

_Diego,_ Eudora would say, curled around him in their bed after a long day at the academy, _your problem isn’t that you’re bad at what you do – it’s that you’re so sure that you have to do it alone – and that’s not what this job is. This job is about being a team—_

_I’ve already been in a team,_ Diego would reply, as it went like this every time, even before he detailed the formative years of his life, _teamwork relies on trust._

_And you don’t trust anyone._

_I trust you._

Diego was kicked from the academy six months before they broke up. He spiralled downwards, almost all the way to the bottom of the hill, before he finally opened the duffel bag he’d stashed at the foot of their wardrobe, filled to the brim with knives and harnesses and a mask.

He went out that first night without telling Eudora. Then the next, and the one after that.

Only after three nights did she ask him where he’d been, who he’d been with, why he’d slipped into bed at four am, reeking of sweat and guilt. This was two months after the academy, and four months before she broke up with him, terrified all the time that he would get himself killed, and unable to help him grow and heal if he wouldn’t let her in anymore.

_Where’s the trust, Diego?_ she yelled on their last night sleeping in the same apartment. _You didn’t trust anyone, but you were supposed to trust me!_

_I do trust you!_ he shouted back; half the apartment between them and the hopeful apology take-out going cold on the coffee table. _I’ve always trusted you!_

_Then why can’t you let me in! Why are you so goddamn terrified of letting me see who you really are?_

_Because you’d hate him!_ Diego cried. _He’s weak! And a coward! And he left his family when they needed him most, just like he left the academy when things got too hard. He’s a fucking loser, Eudora._

She’d been silent for a beat, before whispering, _Well, maybe I’d prefer a loser to the guy who makes me feel unloved._

And that was the story as he might’ve told it for another seven years, until he was twenty-nine years old and living in the basement of the gym he cleaned, going out every night to stop muggings and attacks. Despite doing it for the better half of a decade, barely anyone knew of the Kraken, roaming the streets, doing what he could and then going home to catch an hour’s sleep before the boiler would rumble him awake.

And then his father died, and his missing brother who’d vanished at age thirteen reappeared in a burst of blue light, and with him came trouble as it always did whenever Five was involved. It was only a few days later that Eudora Patch was shot dead in a motel trying to save another missing brother. And Diego found her on the ground, fifteen minutes late. And Diego ran when the sirens sounded. And Diego was fucking _arrested for her murder_ , and broke out to go save the world, and maybe, just maybe he’d add that part of the story in.

About the way he couldn’t get her blood out from underneath his nails, or how he saw her still in his dreams, dead on the carpet, eyes still wide open.

They’d been seven years over and he still loved her.

They’d been seven years over and he’d still managed to wrangle a friendship out of the tangled threads of what had once been the most important relationship in his life. He’d met her new boyfriends since, who’d come and gone, and she’d met the few women who Diego could keep around for more than a month.

But it’d always been her.

“It’d always been her, Klaus,” Diego sighed.

They lapsed into silence on the couch in the living room, a month out from stopping the apocalypse, stopping a _second_ apocalypse in the 60’s, and returning to their own timeline to find mostly everything was the same. Except the colour of the wallpaper, the coffee shop down the block that was now a bar, and Diego’s arrest warrant – which was actually gone due to good policework and a show of leniency out of respect for Patch, letting him off the hook for his jail break.

Diego rolled his head to the side, to look at his brother, somehow _older_ than him now by a good few years, though Diego had always considered himself Klaus’ big brother. They’d found a way to see each other during those seven years after Diego’s break up – though it was mostly because with Klaus’ partying and Diego’s hero complex, they’d both ended up in alleyways in the middle of the night, frequently at the same time.

Because of this, Klaus was one of those preferred siblings. Because of this, Diego had told him the whole messy story of Eudora Patch.

“She sounds so different to Lila,” Klaus commented.

Diego barked out a laugh. “That’s because she _is._ Was.” He blinked. “Was. Patch was a good detective, you know? One of those actual, honest-to-god _good cops._ The only rules she ever broke were to help me, and she believed in people, you know? She was reliable, dependable. Her roommates _hated_ me—” Klaus snorted and Diego reluctantly sighed out a smile that slowly turned bitter.

He’d gone to her funeral; it had been three days after what was supposed to be the end of the world. Klaus had come with, and regaled everyone who’d listen with the story of Patch saving his life – though he never specified that it was the same situation that’d stolen hers. But even Patch’s roommates who hated Diego with every fibre of their beings had come over to speak to him, to give their condolences and sad, watery smiles. He’d slept on their front porch far too many times, but they knew that Patch had cared about him, even if she’d rarely invited him in to take the couch.

“Lila was a fucking wildcard,” Klaus replied.

Lila was the opposite of Patch, and probably the reason why Diego had felt so drawn to her. She was everything he didn’t know; loud, abrasive, spiky and rude. She was hot one minute and cold the next, and Diego was certain that she would’ve been kicked from the Police Academy even faster than him.

There was a loud noise from upstairs, and the two brothers turned towards it. The noise was followed by shouting, and they sighed in tandem.

“Well, that’s our bonding session over with,” Diego muttered.

“Ah, yes, back to the real world,” Klaus replied, “and our exacerbating family.”

But, apparently, their bonding session was only paused, not finished. Because Diego couldn’t stop thinking about Patch, even after they dealt with the screaming match upstairs, made dinner and eventually went to bed. He just laid in his room, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Patch’s smile. About her voice on the phone. About what he would say to her if he had just one more chance.

And then he sat upright.

He _had_ one more chance. Surely. His brother was a walking, talking Ouija Board.

Diego scrambled out of his bed and flung his door wide open. With all the odd numbers on one side of the corridor and all the evens on the other, Klaus and Diego had shared a wall for years. He approached Klaus’ door and hesitated.

He wanted to see Patch. He did. Didn’t he?

Diego missed everything about her; her laugh and her voice and the way she sometimes muttered _What did I do to deserve you?_ under her breath whenever he aggravated her. He missed the life in her eyes. He missed her stomach without the bullet hole in it.

If he talked to her ghost, would she still be bloody?

Diego knocked before he’d thought about it, and pushed the door open, confident Klaus would still be awake.

He was.

“ _Fucking hell—_ ” Diego stumbled backwards, slamming his eyes shut. “Klaus! Why are you naked?”

“It’s _my room,_ asshole,” Klaus responded from somewhere in his bedroom. “Why are you walking in while I’m naked? That’s rude!”

“I knocked!”

“And immediately walked inside! What’s the point of knocking if you’re just gonna come in anyway!”

Diego pressed his fingers hard over his eyes while he waited for Klaus to dress. He asked, “Why were you doing yoga _naked?_ ”

“It’s Pilates, actually,” Klaus replied. “And it’s more freeing that way. I’m decent, Diego—stop looking at me like I just skinned a cat. What do you want?”

Diego peeked between his fingers and, satisfied Klaus was now in a bathrobe and sitting on his bed, stepped back into the room and shut the door behind him. He suddenly realised how forward the question was.

_Can you summon my ex-girlfriend?_

How could he ask that? Klaus was famously indifferent with his powers. He might not even make her _visible._ Ben had appeared, at most, as a blue glow in the Icarus Theatre, and Diego wasn’t sure how much further Klaus had progressed with his powers in the three years he’d been trapped in the past. He’d mentioned something about possession, but surely that would take a lot out of him.

As he hummed and hawed about his question, Klaus sighed heavily and flopped back on his bed.

Diego groaned and turned his head as Klaus said, “Whoopsie, came out to play,” and re-covered himself.

“Just tell me what you _want_ ,” Klaus insisted. “It’s almost—it’s two am, Diego. I know you’re a night-owl-vigilante-in-the-night-time, but this is a late visit, even for you.”

“It’s just…” He pulled a face and started again. “I was wondering if… I had this idea…”

“Diego!” Klaus clapped his hands once, hard. “What’s the worst that can happen if you ask this question?”

Diego considered it for a moment. “You say no.”

Klaus sat up. “Well, I won’t say no, then.”

“Don’t promise that,” Diego replied.

“Okay… I will do my best to not say no,” Klaus amended. “And I won’t make fun of you for whatever you’re about to ask. Unless it’s about you cutting your hair, because I was serious about that Antonio Banderas thing, and the long hair suits you.”

Diego huffed out a half smile and Klaus took it as a victory with a grin.

“Okay,” Diego said. “Alright. It’s just—after what we talked about today, I realised I need… closure.”

“Closure.”

“Uh-huh. With, with Patch. It’s just I—I miss her so much, man.” Klaus’ face fell, and he patted the bed next to him. Diego landed heavily on the mattress. “Even though we were separated for—for years, I kind of always thought that once I got my shit together, she’d see it and remember that she loved me, and…”

“Oh, Diego,” Klaus sighed, throwing his arm around Diego’s shoulder and tugging him into his side.

“She was the one,” Diego said. “I just _know_ it. If everyone gets one chance, _one person,_ then she’s mine. And I’ve lost her.”

“Then it’s a good thing that second chances exist,” Klaus replied. “Because we don’t all get _one person_ – if we did, that would be tragic for the polyamorous community. You’ll find someone else, Diego.”

“I don’t _want_ to, though.” He scrubbed his face and then swiped his hair out of his eyes. “I want _her._ And I can’t have her. She’s gone. And I just—there’s so much I wish I’d had the chance to say to her. Which was—it’s why I came in here.”

Klaus was quiet for a moment, and Diego could hear the cogs working in his brain, clicking into the right place.

Then he said, “Ah,” and straightened. “You want me to summon her.”

Diego’s face morphed into something guilty. “I don’t want to—make you feel… I just know that it’s something you can sometimes do, and…”

“It’s alright, baby brother of mine—”

“You’re not my big brother.”

“—it’s a challenge, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“You will?”

Klaus stood and stretched out his arms, cracking his knuckles. “I’m very sober right now,” he said. “So you caught me during a good life decision. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find her, or even how long she might stay if I do—”

“Of course, of course,” Diego said in a rush. “I just—thank you, Klaus.”

“It’s no biggie.”

“No, it really is.”

Klaus stared at him for a moment longer before stretching out his neck. “I might be able to make her tangible for a minute, but it really does take a lot out of me. When we’re done here, I’m gonna need a hot water bottle and a margarita—” Diego cleared his throat pointedly. “A _virgin_ margarita,” Klaus amended.

He threw his hands out in front of him, shutting his eyes and furrowing his brows tight together. Diego watched, suddenly nervous and desperate to think of the right words to say. He’d never been good at speaking; his stammer had held him back from ever mastering knowing the right thing to say, and now he was terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Klaus’ hands turned blue with effort and whatever magic or science made him The Séance, and then he opened his eyes.

“It’s very nice to see you again, Detective,” Klaus said. Diego sucked in a breath. “Yeah… I’ve grown my hair out since then. It’s a good look, I think.” He looked to Diego and then back at the empty space between the bed at the door. “He can’t hear you,” Klaus said, and Diego desperately searched that space, as if he might be able to see her if he tried hard enough. Was she talking to him?

“Eudora,” he whispered.

“I’m gonna try and make you tangible for a minute,” Klaus said, readying himself by pulling out the desk chair. He didn’t sit just yet. “It’ll take a lot out of me, so it won’t last long, but he’ll see and hear you, and if I get it right, you might even be tangible enough to touch.” He paused, as if listening, and then nodded. “You’re welcome, Detective Patch. And thank _you._ I’d be tortured to death in a motel if it weren’t for you.”

And then his hands glowed brighter, and his face tensed with the strain, and Eudora Patch appeared in a breath.

Diego stared.

She looked exactly as she had on her last day. Her hair pulled back low in a ponytail, her badge hanging from her neck. She wore the same blue shirt, the same brown jacket – the one he’d bought her back when they were together; the good quality leather she still wore, even after they parted ways. But she was too much like she had been when she died; her stomach was stained a deep red; the exit wound of the bullet that had entered through her back, through the back of her good, brown leather jacket.

He sucked in a breath. “Patch.”

“Hargreeves,” Eudora said, like a reverent whisper. She was tangible, whole but not quite. She stepped towards him. “Diego.”

“Eudora.”

Diego stood suddenly and lurched forward, pulling her into a fierce hug she returned just as tightly. He twisted her jacket in his fingers and pressed his nose against her neck, hoping to smell that familiar perfume she’d been wearing for a decade. But it was like she wasn’t there at all; she had no scent. Her ghost did not carry the smell of Eudora Patch and Diego wanted to sob at this missing piece of her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said into her neck. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what, Diego? For what?”

“I should’ve gotten there earlier. I should’ve _been there_.”

“It’s okay—”

“It’s not.” He pulled back, holding her by the biceps. Her face was tear-stained and he was sure his was, too. “But you shouldn’t have gone in there without back-up.”

“I saved your brother.”

“And you _died._ ” Eudora’s sardonic smile agreed with him. “Patch. I just—I m-miss you so fucking much.”

“I know, Diego,” she replied. “I miss you, too. I miss _life,_ even the parts where you’d sleep on my porch or cause me an incomparable amount of stress.” He gasped out a smile and sniffed. God, he probably looked like a fool, desperately in love with a ghost. “You know, you were the cause of all my grey hairs.”

“You don’t have grey hair.”

“Yes, I do. I counted six of them. All your doing.” Her smile was so heartbreakingly familiar. It might’ve been alive if he didn’t know better.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, Patch.”

“Diego.”

“You’re the love of my life. And I fucked it up with you, and all I can think about is how things might’ve gone differently if I’d done better. If I’d stayed and worked it out and loved you like you deserved to be loved.”

“My death isn’t on you,” she told him, firm. “There’s a lot you already have to carry on those shoulders, seeing as you insist on lifting the whole world – don’t add my death to it.”

She flickered under his grip and Diego spared a glance for Klaus, his hands out stretched before him where he was slumped forward on the desk chair.

“I’m gonna do better, you know,” he said suddenly, looking back at her. “I’m gonna be better.”

Her smile was as real as a ghost’s smile could be. “I know, Diego. You’re gonna be the man I always knew you could be.” She flickered again.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know you do,” Eudora replied. She pressed forward, her lips gracing his for the last time. Though she didn’t smell like her, Patch felt just the same. “You were my first love, Diego,” she whispered when she pulled back. Then she smiled, wide. “I like the new hair.”

Patch vanished from under his hands and Diego felt her leave, felt the air go cold without her smile warming it. Diego stared at the place she had been before finally looking down at his clothes, somehow not stained with her blood this time.

“Thank you,” he said to the air, before looking at his brother. Klaus smiled weakly at him from the desk chair, kicking his legs out to spin on the base. “Thank _you_ ,” Diego repeated.

“Anything for you, my itsy bitsy baby brother.”

“I’m not—”

“Did you get closure?”

Diego paused and looked back to the empty space. “I think so,” he said. “I think I just needed to speak with her once more. To let her know.”

Klaus nodded loosely, before Diego smiled, sighing, and scooped him up, heaving him to his feet to return back to his bed.

“One hot water bottle and a virgin margarita coming right up,” Diego said.

“Oh, you’re too kind.”

“Nothing but the best for my favourite brother.”

Klaus grinned, dropping his head onto his pillow. “I’m gonna tell Luther you said that.”

“I encourage you to,” Diego replied. “I want him to know where he stands.”

Diego left Klaus in bed to collect his hot water bottle and virgin margarita, but by the time he returned, Klaus was dead asleep, the sheets tangled around his legs. Diego sighed, placed the margarita on the bedside table, and tucked Klaus in properly, adding in the hot water bottle, which Klaus sensed in his sleep and clung to like a koala. Diego smiled, watching.

He absently brushed back the hair curled across Klaus’ face, and then dropped his hand.

When Diego went back to bed, he slept soundly for the first time in a month.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i'm hoping that due to the changed timeline in the show, eudora patch will be alive again and diego and her can work out their differences and fall in love and asdjkdsjadkla;ds i just love patch okay, she and diego DESERVE BETTER
> 
> pls talk to me in the comments
> 
> tomorrow we continue the 'ghosts' mini series with a fic about a certain number five


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